Scheduled Maintenance August 1st, 2015

Bryant, Cogan, Kalsem, and Williams Appointed to Named Professorships

Four College of Law professors with expertise in constitutional law, international law, women and the law, and the intersection of race, gender, and class have been appointed to named professorships. The professors and their named chairs are A. Christopher Bryant, the Rufus King Professor of Constitutional Law; Jacob Katz Cogan, the Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law; Kristin Kalsem, the Charles Hartsock Professor of Law; and Verna L. Williams, the Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law.

Professor A. Christopher Bryant has Been Appointed the Rufus King Professor of Constitutional Law

Since joining the faculty in 2003, Professor A. Christopher Bryant has been a prolific scholar and a skilled teacher of constitutional law, having received the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching four times – in 2005, 2007, 2008, and, most recently, in 2013.

His numerous published articles and essays reach a wide range of issues of contemporary constitutional importance, including the separation of powers, judicial review, and the roles of the various branches of the national government in constitutional interpretation. A recognized expert on the scope and exercise of national legislative power and the respect that Congressional action is owed from the federal judiciary, he has published leading articles on the subject in the Cornell Law Review, George Washington Law Review, BYU Law Review, Notre Dame Journal of Legislation, and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Professor Bryant’s research in federalism and unenumerated rights include a co-authored book, “Powers Reserved for the People and the States: A History of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments" (Greenwood Press 2006), as well as articles in the Georgia Law Review and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, to name only a few. He authored 13 essays on landmark constitutional cases for the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States (Macmillan 2008), and is a frequent speaker on the Constitution, the Congress, and the federal courts at symposiums, conferences, and public programs.

Professor Bryant is a member of the America Society for Legal History and the Federalist Society, also serving as faculty advisor to the College’s Federalist Society chapter.

Professor A. Christopher Bryant

Professor Jacob Katz Cogan Has Been Appointed the Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law

Professor Jacob Katz Cogan joined the College of Law faculty in 2006 and quickly established himself as a leading scholar in the area of international law.

Professor Cogan’s distinctive research focuses on the informal and operational dimensions of international decision processes and contemporary changes in and challenges to the character and organization of the international system. It is work that has won him accolades, with prominent scholars in the field recognizing him as “one of the current generation’s most promising and productive scholars of international organizations” – “universally respected in international law scholarship and policy circles . . . [and] clearly one of our leaders both intellectually and with the American Society [of International Law].”

Professor Cogan has published numerous influential articles and essays in the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, Yale Journal of International Law, Virginia Journal of International Law, and the Human Rights Quarterly. He is the co-editor of a major collection of essays in international law and has been a frequent presenter at seminars, conferences, and workshops nationally and internationally. He received the 2010 Francis Deák Prize, awarded to a young author for meritorious scholarship published in the American Journal of International Law (the leading peer reviewed journal of international law in the United States), for his article Representation and Power in International Organization: The Operational Constitution and Its Critics.

Professor Cogan edits International Law Reporter, an international law blog that has garnered significant attention within and outside academia, and writes the annual report on the judicial activity of the International Court of Justice for the American Journal of International Law. He is a past co-chair of the International Organizations Interest Group of the American Society of International Law and is a member of the European Society of International Law, the American Society for Legal History, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. Finally, the American Law Institute, one of the premier legal organizations in the country, also elected him as a member.

Professor Jacob Katz Cogan

Professor Kristin Kalsem Has Been Appointed the Charles Hartsock Professor of Law

Professor Kristin Kalsem has been an influential scholar in women and the law since joining the College of Law faculty in 2001.

Professor Kalsem’s 2012 book, "In Contempt: Nineteenth-Century Women, Law, and Literature" (Ohio State University Press), brings together the themes and interests that have distinguished her scholarly work: imaginative interdisciplinary inquiry in law, literature, and feminism; careful attention to history and theory; and – most importantly – a commitment to explore and illuminate the law in practice, as it affects and is affected by human beings. In Contempt‘s exposition of how 19th century women writers performed feminist jurisprudence -- advocating legal issues in their literary works and lives as authors – earned Professor Kalsem the Harold C. Schott Scholarship Award, which recognizes outstanding research and scholarly achievement by a member of the College of Law’s faculty. The emphasis on the importance of bridging theory and practice that underlies In Contempt is especially evident, too, in Professor Kalsem’s article Social Justice Feminism (co-authored with Professor Verna Williams) – a call-to-arms that inspired a conference that brought scholars and activists from around the nation to Cincinnati to explore new ways of understanding and doing feminist work today and in the future.

As an award-winning teacher (twice the recipient of the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching), as co-founder and co-director of the law school’s Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice, and as co-director of UC’s joint degree program in Law and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Professor Kalsem brings these same themes and interests to life for students inside and outside the classroom. An active leader in the American Association of Law Schools, Professor Kalsem has chaired the AALS’s Section on Law and the Humanities and sits on the Executive Board of the Section.

Professor Kristin Kalsem

Professor Verna L. Williams Has Been Appointed Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law

A leading voice at the intersection of race, gender, and class in America, Professor Verna L. Williams’s scholarship, teaching, and leadership consistently bridges theory and practice and seeks to empower positive social change. She joined the College of Law in 2001, after practicing for several years in the areas of civil rights and women’s rights.

Professor Williams’s scholarly agenda is well illustrated by her article Social Justice Feminism (co-authored with Professor Kristin Kalsem). Theoretically insightful and historically sensitive, the article blueprints a feminist jurisprudence – and, importantly, a realizable feminist social action agenda -- for the future that captures reality at the intersection of race, gender, and class. It not only illuminates the past, present, and future, but is conceived to enable people of diverse callings and disciplines to take action and bring about reform.

Critical attention to law’s possibilities in the practical, day-to-day effort to achieve justice similarly informs Professor Williams’s publications on race, gender, and class in the education context that have appeared in the Wisconsin Law Review, Michigan Journal of Race and Law, William & Mary Journal of Women and Law, and Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal. It animates Professor Willams’s leadership as co-director of UC’s joint degree program in Law and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and as co-founder and co-director of the law school’s Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice. It is a constant theme in the national programs she has convened at the College -- including Women Coming Together: Claiming the Law for Social Change (2005) and Social Justice Feminism (2012) – and in the numerous addresses and presentations she has delivered nationally. And it is a distinguishing attribute of her teaching, which has twice earned her the Goldman Price for Excellence in Teaching at the College of Law.

Professor Williams’s service contributions to the college, the university, and the community have been exemplary. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Ms. Foundation and also has served as a consultant for the Ford Foundation. She was recognized in The Women's Book (2012 Cincinnati edition), which includes profiles of a diverse range of women who are succeeding in their careers and giving back to their communities, and also was awarded the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio Women of Distinction Award in 2013.